Mercury Man (2006)

A Thai superhero movie? Sounds weird huh? But why not... After all MIRAGE MAN starring Colombian Martial Artist Marko Zaror was not bad at all, rather interesting despise its lead actor very minimal acting skills.But when it comes to Thai, it seem they ALWAYS have to include some kind of religious factors into there story, and this is always where they are gonna loose us, the western public. We don't care at all about those. The hero happen to be a fireman... thats enough, we like him already, no need to make him somewhat religious or have a religious side kick... I know that the amulets must come from somewhere, but i was hoping for once of having a Thai movie not including something like that at all. Take Ong Bak, take The Protector, what make them fun is Tony Jaa and the fights, nobody cared for the scenario involving religious artifacts...When i watch a Thai Movie, its always the problem, the action is usually great but the scenario does not interest me at all. But sadly in this case even the action was not stellar. Its not atrocious, but this is nowhere near close to what you will expect reading "ong bak" and "The protector" on the cover. It seem the only decent martial arts scenes are the ones when the hero is in costume, which i supposed are done by his stunt double... The action scenes of the girls fighting are pretty weak... and when the hero is out of costume he fight terrible also.But after all its a superhero movie, then how are the special effects, the bad guys, the powers, the costume? Well the power themselves are pretty cool. The black costume ain't bad either, it look a bit in the vein of "Kick Ass" if i can say so don't aspect some Nolan Batsuit, but its decent.The special effects on the other hand... well in some parts there pretty good, but when they want to overdo, it seem our hero morph into a video game character CGI sequence and it looks TERRIBLE. Super Fake looking. The bad guys, now this one made me wondering. There supposed to be some afghan terrorist, but some of them look Caucasians(??) and the hero and his side kick totally look Thai... The worst part is the leader actually wear eye liner and make up that make him look extremely goofy and the dubbing have him talk with some cheap Arabians accent...when every other character talk normal English. Oh and the dubbing... lol... terrible. I know Americans are not used to dub movies... I'm from Quebec, i watch most of my movies in french dubbing, and we know how to do the job well, but here, it seem some American dudes where just reading the lines and thats it... They even dubbed a guy looking like he is 85 years old with a 40 years old sounding voice....So in the end what can i say? Well enough action to entertain me, but some of it is good, some of it is bad, the special effects where cool in moments, cheap DTV CGI looking in others, the dubbing horrible, but the part that disappoint the most is the story.You are never really explain where the amulets come from, the terrorist goal and back story is terrible, and that little boy that seem to have mind control over human and electronic... they never explain where he come from at all... but he become a key part of the story so your like.... WHAT??? So Mercury Man is more or less what Jeremy Jahns would call "You'r not gonna remember it in T-minus 15 minutes"...

I was going into this hoping for a so-bad-its-good type movie, but for the most part it's just plain old bad. There are some of the ridiculous moments I was hoping for, like the horrific CGI superhero rescuing people, random atomic artifacts that give superpowers or blow up, and out-of-left-field plot contrivances, but they are rather sparse in a movie that is essentially Thai Magneto vs. Osama Bin Laden. It drags badly in several places to the point that my friend and I were seriously considering just turning it off, but every time it would drag us back in with a slow motion leap over a random couch or the hero sliding down a rope from the top floor of a burning building on his fire axe. In the end, though, I wouldn't recommend it. If you're looking for a movie to take seriously, this one has too many CGI, plot, and dialogue problems. If you're looking for a fun bad movie, it doesn't have enough of them. It's stranded in that limbo between good and bad that is worse than either. If about an hour of plot dialogue had been cut out of this nearly two hour movie, it would be decent, but as it stands, it's not worth your time. If you're looking for a good bad superhero movie, Condorman or Return of Captain Invincible are better. If you're looking for a good Thai martial arts movie, stick with Tony Jaa. Either way, stay away from this one.

Good live-action superhero movies are worth their weight in gold. (To the aficionado, anyway: to the filmmakers, considerably more than that.) MERCURY MAN isn't bad, though it rarely rises above the level of the first SPIDER-MAN (which boasted some great cgi and some solid performances, but which suffered, too, from some really bad cgi and some lapses in logic that were downright mind-boggling). Unlike Peter Parker, Mercury Man also happens to be (in addition to being a super-powered hero), pretty good with his hands and feet. (One of the more interesting superheroes from days of yore was a character called Wildcat. He dressed all in black, with a cat-like mask. In "real life," he was a former heavyweight boxing champion of the world. It's always more interesting when a hero can rely on some kind of skill other than his super power.) (And, if the foregoing has in any way whetted your appetite, check out the new BRAVE AND THE BOLD series: in one episode, Batman teams up with none other than Wildcat himself.) (And, while I'm on the subject of superheroes, I highly recommend the DVD release of HULK VS. THOR. This happens to be- as far as I know- the first time Thor has been done right since the mid-1960s- in a limited-animation series that was scarcely more than panels taken directly from the comics themselves-, although The Hulk is twice his size.) If you're a die-hard fan of the genre, you could do a whole lot worse than MERCURY MAN.

Apart from 1 or 2 good action scenes this movie has nothing to offer! I wasn't expecting anything special! But what I did get was far below average! I can't imagine that this movie will appeal to anyone! The biggest problem of this movie is that it takes itself to seriously! They could have done so if they at least delivered on the action front! This movie could have used more humor which would have improved the badly choreographed action scenes immensely! Also what bothered me a lot wasn't the bad acting or the plot and even the bad choreography! It was the inconsistency of the use of superpowers! At one time he is able to fly and suddenly he can't! At one time he is able to use some form of telekinesis and just like that he isn't able to and just keeps on jumping and kicking like a muay Thai fighter! The very few special fx are OK, but nothing you haven't seen before! My guess is that this movie is made for children! But trust me even children would like this movie! Avoid "Mercury Man" at all costs!